Clove Currant

Size, growth and what to expect

It grows at a medium pace, about a foot and a half a year in our growth estimator, and seedlings put on 6 to 12 inches in their first year. It makes an arching, many-stemmed shrub of 3 to 10 feet, most often 6 to 8 feet tall and as wide. It slowly spreads by suckers into a small colony.

Golden yellow, tubular flowers open in nodding clusters from April into June, with a strong scent of cloves. The berries ripen from June into August, black or sometimes golden or reddish brown, a quarter to nearly half an inch across. They are sweet and full of seeds, good fresh or in jam, jelly and pie. Catbirds, thrashers, robins, waxwings, squirrels and chipmunks eat them, and mule deer browse the twigs.

It grows wild mostly on the Plains and in the Ozarks, from Montana and the Dakotas south to New Mexico and Texas and east to Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, Arkansas and Tennessee. Its home is rocky slopes, limestone and sandy bluffs, prairies and shaded banks. It has spread from gardens farther east.

How to grow Clove Currant

Clove currant grows in full sun or part shade, in almost any well-drained soil, sandy, loamy or clay, from slightly acid to alkaline. It takes dry, exposed ground once rooted, but ground that stays waterlogged does not suit it. Set plants 6 feet apart, and keep each one 4 feet from a wall. At its size it can go within 15 feet of overhead wires.

Saplings ship bare-root or potted. Plant them dormant, from leaf fall until bud swell, in a hole wider than the roots and no deeper. Set the crown at the soil line, put the native soil back in, and keep the mulch clear of the stems. Sow cleaned seed outdoors in fall a quarter inch deep, under a light mulch. Fall sowing suits it best, because some seed has a hard coat. For spring, keep the seed damp in the refrigerator for 60 to 90 days first.

Water weekly through the first summer, at the base rather than overhead, since wet leaves invite mildew. White-tailed deer and rabbits seldom browse it, though mule deer do. In early spring, cut a few of the oldest stems to the ground to renew the clump.

Each flower carries both male and female parts. Some plants set no fruit with their own pollen and others only a little, so plant two or more from different seed for a crop. Plants begin to bear after about three years, and good crops come every year. Leaf spot, anthracnose, mildew and rust can mark the leaves, and currant worms and tent caterpillars can strip them. It is a host of white pine blister rust, which does a currant little harm but kills white pines and other five-needled pines. Keep it at least 900 feet from any white pine, since the spores that carry the rust from currant to pine rarely survive farther. Several states restrict currants for this reason, and North Carolina and Rhode Island ban this one outright, so check your state's rules first.